that the governors of the Foundling Hospital will exert their utmost
skill and vigilance, to prevent the children, under their care, from
being poisoned, or enervated by one or the other. This, however, is not
the case of workhouses: it is well known, to the shame of those who are
charged with the care of them, that gin has been too often permitted to
enter their gates;--and the debauched appetites of the people, who
inhabit these houses, has been urged as a reason for it.

"Desperate diseases require desperate remedies: if laws are rigidly
executed against murderers in the highway, those who provide a draught
of gin, which we see is murderous, ought not to be countenanced. I am
now informed, that in certain hospitals, where the number of the sick
used to be about 5600 in 14 years,

From 1704 to 1718, they increased to 8189;
From 1718 to 1734, still augmented to 12,710;
And from 1734 to 1749, multiplied to 38,147.

"What a dreadful spectre does this exhibit! nor must we wonder, when
satisfactory evidence was given, before the great council of the nation,
that near eight millions of gallons of distilled spirits, at the
standard it is commonly reduced to for drinking, was actually consumed
annually in drams! the shocking difference in the numbers of the sick,
and, we may presume, of the dead also, was supposed to keep pace with
gin; and the most ingenious and unprejudiced physicians ascribed it to
this cause. What is to be done under these melancholy circumstances?
shall we still countenance the distillery, for the sake of the revenue;
out of tenderness to the few, who will suffer by its being abolished;
for fear of the madness of the people; or that foreigners will run it in
upon us? There can be no evil so great as that we now suffer, except the